Dancing is a fun, social and healthy pastime desired to be enjoyed by many Americans. However, what stops many people from dancing is the difficulty of learning how to dance. Although there have been countless books and videotapes on dancing, most of these tools are not effective because the user is forever staring at a book or a screen trying to imitate movements shown. Many of theses products, in particular, audio tape and compact discs, are put together with the anticipation that they will be listened to in the course of the person practicing their dancing. Even video tapes are produced with the understanding that the tapes will be used during practice. However, all the user sees is the resulting dance and not the steps used to create the dance. Thus, the user hopelessly imitates the look of the dance rather than the dance itself. Furthermore, in trying to watch a tape, the user loses the feel of dancing to the music and rather vainly tries to memorize steps. Therefore, the best result of this training is that the user somehow manages to learn a few steps which are used ad nauseam on the dance floor. For young children, this process is particularly difficult as a child's attention span is short and paying attention to a video tape while trying to master new dance steps is difficult at best. As a result there are countless dancing schools for both adults and children. Teachers are very good about showing a student how to place his feet. However, many families cannot afford the time and money associated with such lessons. Furthermore, unless the lessons are the very expensive individualized lessons, a student is forced to learn at the pace of the class and thus may not be able to fully master steps.
Thus, there is a need for a system which can be used at an individual's own learning pace. There is also a need for a system which functions respond to the music from the loudspeaker on the shoe or from other musical sources. It is also desirable that the system train the user to dance by training the users brain feet and ears to coordinate and move to the music.